Bizarre Creations Closed – Tribute from Employee

Activision has, today, officially shut down Bizarre Creations. A champion developer, Bizarre is responsible for hours upon hours of gaming fun and enlightenment. Their track record hasn’t been entirely composed of massively successul titles, but the great games within their portfolio are unforgettable.

These are the folks behind Project Gotham Racing 3 and Geometry Wars, arguably two of the best games available on the Xbox 360 early in its lifespan. Prior to this generation, the team is responsible for a slew of titles, most of which center around their greatest set of assets: the ability to make great racing games.

The reason for the studio’s closure, while not definite, can be linked back to a statement released by Activision in November of last year. The culprit for the discussion at hand was the commercially underperforming kart racer, Blur. As VG247 had it:

“Over the past three years since our purchase of Bizarre Creations, the fundamentals of the racing genre have changed significantly. Although we made a substantial investment in creating a new IP, Blur, it did not find a commercial audience. Bizarre is a very talented team of developers, however, because of the broader economic factors impacting the market, we are exploring our options regarding the future of the studio, including a potential sale of the business.”

When this closure was finalized back in January, almost exactly a month ago, Activision Worldwide Studios’ COO Coddy Johnson spoke with Develop:

“I want to be clear, our first choice was to try and keep this group together and find a buyer for the studio… [Activision has] explored a lot of leads – pretty much anyone you can imagine in the industry. But unfortunately, so far we’ve not been able to find any interested parties. So we’ve made as a last resort, a recommendation to the team for closure.”

The video at the top of this post is an emotional tribute of the work produced by Bizarre Creations made by an employee at the studio and released today, that day the offices close. Eamon Urtone did up a beautiful farewell to the studio.